


Revenge! A Vengeful Tale of Vengeance

by tothineownelfbetrue



Category: Disenchantment (Cartoon 2018)
Genre: Attempted Kidnapping, Bargaining, Bean is actually kind of scary, Elfo gets elf-napped yet again, Elfo makes a bargain, Gallows Humor, Gen, Humor, Kidnapping, Luci is nice for once... a little bit anyway, Minor Character(s), No seriously she's killed more people than the actual villains, One-Shot, POV Third Person, Poker playing dude doesn't know what he's dealing with, Poker playing dude hates Bean, Prompt Fic, Revenge, lots of talking, millwordy, no beta we die like men, petty revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:47:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26354452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tothineownelfbetrue/pseuds/tothineownelfbetrue
Summary: Elfo gets kidnapped yet again.  Why is Bean so darn good at pissing people off?[Based on the "Revenge" prompt for a Millwordy challenge]Or: That weird fic that's mostly about seeing the weirdness of the main characters through the eyes of an unsuspecting minor character dude. Also there's Revenge.
Kudos: 10





	Revenge! A Vengeful Tale of Vengeance

-

  
  


Bean leaned over the table, a wide grin on her face and her coordination just impaired enough that she slopped a splash of beer across the worn wood and the front of Elfo’s shirt. The elf squeaked at that, looking down at himself and plucking at the sodden fabric with a whine. The drunk princess grinned a little, only a bit chagrined at her slip. “Hey, sorry about that, Elfo.” She reached for a towel, snatching one away from one of the servers to pass to him. The man gave her a dirty look but didn’t protest, just walking away with a sullen expression.

Elfo took the towel, dabbing fitfully at the front of his shirt before sighing. “I’m gonna have to go soak it.” He whined. “It’s my only shirt left.”

It was true. He did tend to go through a fair amount of shirts after all the shenanigans they got up to. Fortunately for Elfo, they could basically make like six Elfo sized shirts by stealing and cutting up just one of Zog’s massive outfits. This was just the last one they had in the colour he preferred.

As Elfo made his way to the bathroom - now nicely labeled with a “Get in and out and flush the damn toilet you slobs” sign, courtesy of Luci - he wiggled his arms into his shirt in preparation of pulling it off over his head. He didn’t like people to see him topless so he reached awkwardly for the door handle while wiggling a hand beneath the fabric.

As the door swung open, he took a step back upon realizing there was already someone standing there. The chubby man had a bulbous nose and brown hair and seemed vaguely familiar though Elfo couldn’t place him. To be fair… most humans looked a bit alike to him. The man wasn’t on the toilet, at least. He was just standing there, looming.

“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize this was already occupied…” Elfo began, fidgeting awkwardly. He didn’t get to finish the rest of his apology as a sack came down on top of him.

-

Elfo wailed the entire time he was being carted around in the sack. He had no idea where they were going or why he was being taken, but he did know how to scream loudly and piercingly and he did so with abandon. 

What was up with his luck? Did he have a ‘kidnap me’ sign on his back or something? He resolved to check once he was rescued from this situation. It wouldn’t have been entirely out of the question given the numerous other signs that Luci had put on him before. Either way, he was getting pretty tired of being manhandled. Where were his friends? “Beaaaaaan!” he called out again.

“Shut up you.” The man’s voice was gruff and he dropped the sack of elf unceremoniously onto the ground. “Stop calling for your princess. She’s the reason you’re here.” As the sack was tugged open, Elfo got another good look at his captor. 

In the slightly better light, the man still looked familiar but Elfo had no more luck figuring out who the heck he was than before. “Bean asked you to kidnap me?” There was a note of hurt to Elfo’s voice at that thought. Surely she wouldn’t have-?

“What?” The man blinked. “No. Why would she do that?” he hesitated, eyes narrowed. “Is that a thing she does?”

“Well, I didn’t think so, but I can’t be sure,” Elfo said, honestly. He loved Bean dearly but she did have kind of a bad track record. “I mean she’s done worse things, but it was usually to other people. You know… bad people. They deserved it.

“...well mostly.” Elfo’s hesitation made his captor shoot him a nervous expression.

“Be that as it may.” the man finally said, clearing his throat. “She didn’t ask me to kidnap you, but you’re my ticket to finally getting my revenge!”

“Your revenge? On Bean?” Elfo stared blankly. “For what?”

“For what, he asks?” The man muttered. “For stealing and cheating, of course. She’s cheated me at cards time and time again. Changing rules just because she’s ‘the princess’ and she apparently can do that. It’s not fair sportsmanship! That’s not how you play the game! And they taking my winnings and tossing them to the crowd! Those’re mine! I won them fair and square!”

Elfo nodded slowly as he spoke. “So you’re saying Bean cheated at a game and took your money? Well, that does sound like Bean... She’s getting better though!” 

“Getting better? What does that even mean?” the man growled. “Once a cheat, always a cheat.”

“Nuh-uh. People can change. You just have to give them a chance and see the best in them. And sure, Bean is a hot-tempered, aggressive drunk who’s murdered at least a dozen people, but she’s also really sweet deep down.”

She’s done _what_ now?”

“Murdered.” Elfo supplied helpfully. “A dozen people at least.” He paused, trying to do some quick mental calculations before giving up on an exact estimate, “ Maybe more.” 

Though Elfo was merely being informative, something about his clarification wasn’t sitting well with his captor. The man cleared his throat after a few seconds, like he wanted to say something. Then he shook his head a little. “But she wouldn’t murder someone for no good reason, right?” He began, then tapped his fingers on the table. Elfo squirmed a little in his sack, just his head sticking out. He was still somewhere in Dreamland, from what he could tell. The general amount of grime and squalor was about right. 

“What? Bean? Of course not.” He hesitated a few seconds to consider the validity of that statement. “Well, I mean other than that one guy. And… a few other guys. But I mean, most of them had it coming. There was this one guy who kidnapped me and she kind of murdered him twice?” Elfo shrugged. 

His current kidnapper wasn’t taking that too well. “Wait, you’ve been kidnapped before?” 

“Oh yeah! Lots of times now.” Elfo managed to wiggle an arm free of the sack, pushing at the table to right himself so he didn’t have his face pressed against the floor. Now that he really thought about it, he did kind of get snatched a lot. It was a good thing that Bean was always willing to come after him. She’d done the same for Luci though, so it was probably just a Bean trait. “There was that time with Big Jo. And that time with the cannibals who wanted to eat me. And then that other time with Big Jo.” He counted them off on his fingers but was cut off by his captor reaching for him and holding him upright.

The man wrinkled his bulbous nose a bit. “So you don’t think she’d… I don’t know… pay a lot of gold and jewels as a ransom for your return?”

Well, if Bean _had_ a bunch of money, she might have, but considering how much of a lush Bean was - and the general issues the entire royal family seemed to have with budgetary matters overall, that seemed dubious at best. “Well… It's just that she’s kind of broke?” His shoulders rose in a shrug and he let out a small laugh, modest. “I mean… not to brag, but I think I actually have more money than the entire royal family. I mean… I’m just saying. They’re bad at money.”

The expression on the man’s face was of someone who was evaluating his life choices. Elfo still had no idea why he was even here other than something about Bean cheating at cards - which, honestly, sounded like a thing Bean would do, especially if she was drunk. Why this involved Elfo at all, he wasn’t certain. Besides, he had other things that were more pressing on his mind. “Hey… if you don’t mind… can I have a drink? I’ve been lying on the dusty floor for a while and I’m kind of parched.” He hadn’t even gotten to finish his drink earlier.

Given the general rudeness involved with being shoved into a dirty sack and carted around like potatoes, he wasn’t exactly expecting a lot. But the man shoved a cup into Elfo’s waiting hands without any delay. Elfo sipped at it. It was subpar ale - he’d been a little spoiled with Luci owning the bar - but it felt good with his super dry throat.

While Elfo was drinking, the man was pondering something. His face was starting to turn red with the effort of thinking everything through. Elfo finished off the cup and set it down politely. “Is everything okay?” He asked. When there was no immediate answer, he persisted. “Hey? Is everything okay?” His voice pitched higher and querulous the second time. The man winced a little, lips pulling back to expose a flash of uneven teeth.

“So the princess doesn’t have money…” the man began slowly, “and she kills off a lot of people. Is that about it?”

Elfo nodded, pleased that despite the man’s earlier confusion, he’d finally figured it out. “Right!”

The groan that rose from the human was unexpected, especially since they were both now finally on the same page. “Great.”

“It is?” Elfo wasn’t sure if it was great. He’d been kidnapped. Mostly he was waiting around for Bean and Luci to notice he was gone and come and get him back. The conversation was more of a nice way to pass the time. Still, it seemed like this was all more of a pain for everyone involved. 

People really needed to stop kidnapping him. It was getting tiresome and racking up a really big body count.

“Of course it’s not great!” the man snapped. Elfo would have chastised him for being rude when someone was just trying to be helpful, but when he went to say just that, his words were cut off by the man rubbing at his own temples. “So what you’re really saying is that I went and kidnapped you and might have signed my own death warrant at the hands of that royal lunatic for no goddamn reason? I knew she was a lousy cheat but I didn’t realize she was a broke murderer too!”

Elfo blinked slowly. Everything the man had said was technically accurate so he couldn’t disagree. The only thing he could have pointed out was that Bean really was very nice when you got to know her. Mostly. “Well… yes.”

The man shook his head. “This was not how I saw my day going. I just wanted my winnings back. That damn princess takes everything from me. She doesn’t even care how difficult it is for your average grifting gambler to make a living in these difficult times!” He scoffed a little, sinking down into a nearby chair and looking down at Elfo. Silence stretched out.

“So…” Elfo said at last. “What now?” He’d been expecting a little more torture during his kidnapping. He got a lot of that. This guy couldn’t have been that great of a gambler if he was so bad at a simple thing like torturing his captive. He really didn’t think the man had any kind of plan on what he was going to do.

“Now… I guess I wait until your princess discovers you missing and then comes to off me.” The man leaned back in his chair, reaching for a drink himself, raising it to his lips and then pausing, sighing and tipping the cup over. It was empty. “And you drank the last of my ale.”

Elfo could almost feel sorry for the man. He knew what it was like to be treated like a failure. He’d been there. And he had helped himself to the last of the man’s booze, so it was only polite to say something. “Well…” He began, slowly, “I mean... You could let me go? It’s not too late.”

He didn’t expect the man to go for it, considering every other person he’d been kidnapped by had held on until the inevitable collapse of their plans - and their accompanying deaths. But at his words, the man perked up in his chair.

“Wait… I can, can’t I?” He was excited, hands braced on the table and then he slumped again. “No, wait. What good with that be. I was doing this for revenge. If I just let you go, my revenge will be useless.”

“True.” Elfo nodded. “That is true. But maybe think about this… you wouldn’t _die_.” Under his breath, he added a mumbled, “ _probably._ ” Frankly speaking, the man might still wind up dying because of Bean’s antics at some point. In addition to the actual murders, there were also a fair amount of random uninvolved casualties… like the entire kingdom, for example.

The man was taking far too long to process what Elfo considered to be the best part of this particular agreement. Not dying. Then, finally, he dipped his head with a sigh. “I mean… I just don’t know…”

For heaven’s sake, this kind of waffling was almost enough to make Elfo feel bad for the fact that he’d been pretty indecisive himself in the past. It was way more annoying when someone else was doing it to him. He hoped he’d never been this annoying…

But a thought struck Elfo then, one that he had to say was pretty clever. All it took was playing to the man’s obvious frustration in his dealings with Bean. As much as he talked about money and cheating and the general fairness - or lack thereof - when it came to Dreamland’s walking disaster of a princess, Elfo could tell that there was a common thread in all of the man’s arguments and protests. He didn’t like losing to Bean. He wanted to beat her even more than he wanted...whatever revenge this was supposed to be.

“But you’d win if you let me go!” He blurted out. The seemingly nonsensical statement caught the man’s attention and he glared down at Elfo in suspicion.

“What do you mean? I wouldn’t get anything if I let you go.” He reached out, grabbing the sack and lifting it - and the helpless elf contained within - to eye level. 

This was the make or break moment. _Be convincing, Elfo!_ he encouraged himself. Clearing his throat, he clenched his hands into fists inside the sack holding him. “But you _would_ win. I mean… a lot of people have kidnapped me… or locked me up… or… you know… tried to cook me and eat me… all that kinda stuff..” He shrugged, “But… I mean I’m still here and no one has gotten away with doing any of those things. Bean has always beaten the people who tried. But if you let me go… then you did something that no other person ever did before.”

The man was hanging on his every word and Elfo felt a small fluttering surge of relief - and maybe a bit of heady power - in his chest. His argument might have been a little disjointed but as he said it out loud it actually made some kind of weird sense. If the man let him go, he would have ‘defeated’ Bean by stealing Elfo and then never being punished for the infraction since Bean didn’t even know about it. He could only hope the man would take this small victory, coached in flattery.

The human furrowed his thick brows, deep in thought. “So you mean that I’ll have had my revenge on Bean by successfully capturing her companion and having her never get to rescue you?” He mused aloud. “I don’t know. That seems a bit… sneaky.”

Elfo gave him a judgemental stare at that, a look he’d perfected after spending so much time with Luci and Bean. “Well… I mean you were just complaining about Bean cheating. I mean… what was that about turnabout being fair play? Or I guess you could just _wait_ until Bean gets here and kicks your butt and then you don’t have any money and you’d stop being alive. That sounds like something a _loser_ would do.” He wasn’t normally so harsh, but he really wanted to get out of this sack and he had no idea how long it would take Bean to sober up enough to realize he was missing. His foot was already falling asleep. He could feel the pins and needles starting up.

For a few seconds, he thought his impatience might actually have been his undoing because the man’s grip tightened and he gave Elfo a slight shake that rattled him a little. Elfo was bracing himself for the inevitable ‘being torn limb from limb by an irate gambler’ thing to happen, but… it didn’t.

Instead, the human’s angry expression melted into a thoughtful one. Elfo wasn’t sure if it was the threat of humiliation and death or the dislike of being thought of as a loser that sparked the change. Either way, it was better than continuing to be strangled, so Elfo had to consider it a good thing.

“Okay.” The human concluded, grudgingly. When Elfo stared at him in blank surprise, still amazed that he’d actually managed to talk his way out of a situation - him! Elfo! - the human grunted, attitude defensive. “She has it coming. And I’ve had enough victories stolen from me. If I let you go, I’ll always know I beat Bean at something.”

Elfo nodded enthusiastically in response as the human rose to his feet, the action hoisting Elfo even higher into the air. As the human stalked toward the door, he paused with one hand on the handle. “Hey. If I let you go, you’re not going to just tell her and she’ll murder me anyway, right?”

There was only one right answer to that question and Elfo was smart enough, even with his brief moment of panic, to give it. “Of course not! Your secret victory is safe with me!” He tried to look and sound as trustworthy as possible. The man frowned a little but then his shoulders rose in a shrug. He put his hand back on top of Elfo’s head and shoved him unceremoniously back into the sack as Elfo let out a muffled yelp of complaint.

-

The second trip in a sack - well… more than second overall… but the second sack trip by this particular would-be kidnapper - was just as unpleasant as the first. He was jostled and bounced a lot on the way to wherever they were going and it felt like it was taking forever. It was just enough time for Elfo to worry about whether the man was going to go back on his decision and off Elfo while he had the chance-

_ technically no one had ever killed Elfo except for that one time, so it still seemed a little unlikely _

-but then, just when Elfo had almost convinced himself of it, the sack opened and he was dumped unceremoniously to the ground. It took a few seconds, but he finally recognized the dirty back alley to one side of Luci’s Inferno. It occurred to him that maybe the human hadn’t wanted Elfo to know where he lived so Bean couldn’t do some later murder.

Smart move, really.

“Now, you keep your mouth shut.” The man warned and Elfo nodded enthusiastically. So far this was the best kidnapping he’d been involved in… at least where his own personal safety and state of mind were concerned.

Elfo waited as the man pointed ominously at him for a few long seconds, what was obviously meant to be warning. He kept that pose even as he backed out of the alley. Elfo was perfectly quiet for a few seconds, waiting for the sound of footsteps to die down in the distance, and waiting for his brief vertigo to clear up.

Then, a bit unsteady on his feet, he made his way back into Luci’s Inferno through the service door. Luci was inside, moving around in the back and grabbing more drinks to take around to the front. He paused as he saw Elfo standing there, rumpled and bruised. His head tilted, ears perking.

“Another kidnapping?” Luci’d been captured himself a few times so he was probably better at spotting the signs.

“Yeah.” Elfo sighed. “But it’s okay. I took care of it.”

Luci nodded. For a moment, when his mouth opened, Elfo was expecting some jibe at his expense. A bit of not-entirely-friendly mockery. Instead, there were a few seconds of silence and then Luci jerked his head toward the front of the bar in indication. “You don’t belong back here. Employees only.” A pause, as Elfo limped toward the front on feet that were currently prickling with pins and needles, and then he added, “Next drink is on me.”

Elfo smiled. “Thanks.”

-

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
